It took me some time to write this news. Unfortunetly we are bringing UFO:TTS downloads down and stoping the development. It’s not because we don’t have the time, or that we got bored. Reason is simpler – legality issues. When we started the project we weren’t as concerned about this as we are now. We believed that if we are doing everything from zero and doing it for free – we are doing it legally. Turns out its more complicated than that. All the material that we studied on the internet points towards a simple fact that even things like ‘look and feel’ of any game can be considered intelectual property of their authors. As to the future of the game and the site… it remains open for discussion. The site will most likely remain operative. As to the game itself – we don’t know yet.

You can visit our forum for discussion.

A couple of important things to note:
UFO:TTS is undergoing some changes. As we mentioned already in other news, we are developing another game at the same time, using different engine. We’re thinking about rewritting parts of TTS using it. 0.99 has network code borrowed from this other engine. What it means is that… either the game will start finally working in multiplayer as it should, or it will be even worse since the new network code isnt tested . We will leave 0.98d downloads for now, so that if 0.99 proves not to be working, people can still get the last “stable” version. Oh, and dont think that network code will fix all the issues either. Unfortunetly its just the part that made data transfer incorrectly thats been fixed. The game can still crash by inproperly handling the now ‘correct’ data. (so, in other worlds: regular bugs). So as usual, report all that you find that is not working as expected at our bug section on the forum.
Another thing: with the new patch be sure to start a new game. Dont load previous saves.

Download now
Changelog: at forum

Based on 0.98, we’ve started some balancing work. Let’s hope it went in the right direction .

A side note: 0.98 introduces simple ufopaedia. You can press it and you wil see an information page telling you that this is a work in progress. While that is true, you can still press “next” button and see some text related to techs. Anyone who would like to write some actual text can check the <ufo tts install dir>/ufopaedia/entries.txt and edit it in notepad.

!!EDIT!! Version 0.98d is up. Some more tweaks. And that’s it folks. Next version in works is a 0.99, no more small updates.

Execs only (for those who have 0.98, 0.98b, 0.98c): Download now (1 M)
Full package (for those that have older versions or dont have any): Download now (64 M)
Changelog: at forum

Here’s more improvements and bug fixes. Some of them quite important, like introduction of researchable aliens. Have fun. And as always – report bugs on the forum.

Download now
Changelog: at forum

!!EDIT!!

I had to reupload the patch once more, now it is 0.98b. There is one bugfix more and some balancing changes. Please redownload the patch.

I’ve been “trying” to implement ufopaedia for a long time now… Everytime i’m about to do it, I open the project, look at the layout designe and… decide im too tired for it:). The problem is that ufopaedia would require quite many new user controls that the game doesn’t have. Considering that they are not useful for the game itself, I always leave implementing it for some later time – after all the core mechanics are done and game works without (too many) bugs. This means it will not be anytime soon. What i though I would do in the mean time is to make a placeholder ufopaedia. It would have just two buttons for navigating to the next and previous entry and just some text for the tech itself. No images, no neat windows. Enough however to get some of the important information you, as the player, might want. So 0.98 will have this placeholder thing. We will probably make a web ufopaedia along the way too in some distant future. By the way: is there any volunteer for writting the actual ufopaedia’s texts? That would save me a lot of time. We don’t want to copy the ones from the original game. So it would be rewording and adding/changing content to make it up to date with TTS. Would be great if this individual was either native English speaker or really fluent at it. Although the most important thing right now is to put some vital statistics for various technologies, but writting actual long flavour texts would be good too. Important: Volunteer must be able to come online on irc at resanoable time hours (European time) since that’s the only effective way to recive information on all the techs.

From other news,
Thanks to help from Jukebox and Matiz I was able to pinpoint a probable cause of multiplayer dissinchronisation issues (only the ones that appear in game if you previously recived “LAG” messages). Full fix for it requires a lot of work, so it will be fixed in 0.99 or even 1.00. I don’t know if it will solve 100% of related issues, but it should fix at least some. In 0.98 a new time-out feature will be added which can help a bit (its a quickfix, but not very reliable). Also, you can try playing via hamachi, as it seems to help.

TTS team is working on a new game. We’ve decided to go into real game development, making a commercial title. It has no relation to ufo. It’s our own idea for a game. We want to be fair with the players, so I’ll admit that making another game slowed down TTS development. But it did not stop it. Actually, we’ve been working on this new title for more than three months now, yet patches 0.95 – 0.97 saw the light of the day, and 0.98 is already in the making (and more news on the 0.98 will follow shortly).
Details on the new game will follow as soon as we’ve got something solid to show.

The Ninex server hosts projects related to X-COM, including UFO: Alien Invasion, UFO: The Two Sides and OpenXcom. Server and bandwidth isn’t free and we need your help to keep them alive.

We need to raise at least 225 Euro each year to keep the server delivering downloads, developer tools, forums, and all the other bits and pieces that help these projects run.

Server specification will depend on how much money will be raised:
For 225 euro / year – Intel Celeron D/215/220 1.20+ GHz, 2 GB DDR 1 / DDR 2, HDD 250 GB
For 625 euro / year – Intel Quad Core Q6600 4x 2.40+ GHz, 4 GB DDR 2, HDD 1 TB

So donate today to keep development moving on the unique blend of tactics and strategy that made X-COM the greatest game of all time.

I’d like to officialy welcome a new member of the TTS dev team: Trojak.

He’s both graphics artist and composer, redoing background images and music. If he keeps working at this pace, next patch will have all the backgrounds and all the music redone .

Here’s a sample of some of the backgrounds.

Indie DB and Mod DB are organizing indie of the year awards. Anyone who likes Ufo:TTS can vote for us at http://www.indiedb.com/games/ufo-the-two-sides. There are only 2 days left to vote.

On that page you have to scroll down untill you find a vote button and press it.

It took us some time, but here it is. Again, this is mostly bug fixing. No new major functionality has been implemented. But the list of bugs fixed (and some balancing changes) is not that short either. For those of you who don’t know the drill: Download the new version (its a full package, not a patch). Extract to a new folder. Optionally run the extractor. Finally, copy your saves from 0.96 into 0.97 if you have any. As always – report bugs on the forum.

Download now
Changelog: at forum